


Smoke

by Overlord_Bethany



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, alcohol mention, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 16:54:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11971626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Overlord_Bethany/pseuds/Overlord_Bethany
Summary: Immediately after the ending of The Winter Soldier. Bucky introspection.





	Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> I almost never stray out of tiny fandoms, but this fell out of my brain while I was at work today. I place the blame entirely on the fact that I've been reading _The Poisoner's Handbook_ , which is a fine example of how history should be written.

_My daddy died drinking Smoke._

That was the first unwelcome thought to enter my head as I stood there in the Smithsonian, overwhelmed by evidence of a life I had forgotten, by the scraps of long ago that teased at the edges of my broken brain. I stared at the photographs that should have come alive with the shades of memory. I watched the newsreels, I studied each face, waiting for the ghosts of the past to return to me. But that was the thought that came as I stood beside the inadequate biography of James Buchanan Barnes.

_My daddy died drinking Smoke._ They left that part out.

Well of course they had. That's not the sort of thing one says about a so-called American Hero, that his father drank poison for liquor and died of it.  _I could stop these people_ , I thought, looking around at the museum patrons milling about, gazing at the photographs, reading the placards.  _I could tell them, and not one of them would believe me._

To be fair, most of them would probably have no idea what those words meant. I would have to explain the lethal cocktails of industrial alcohol sold on the cheap during Prohibition. Then I would have to tell them  _why_ people drank them. That when the wallpaper is poison and so is medicine, when you take your life in your hands every time you ride the elevated, when the appliances in your own home could kill you at any moment, gambling your life on the toxic booze seems perfectly reasonable.

The world had been smaller then, drawn tightly in on me, a constricting mess of narrow streets growing ever more crowded with traffic. I fought for the memories, the smell of the exhaust, blaring horns and the shouts of frustrated drivers. The way they avoided looking at the pedestrians. The way the dust and the fumes made Steve stumble and wheeze.

Steve.

I grasped at the memory, but it vanished like smoke.

My world was bigger now, impossibly vast, and more terrifying that I could ever begin to describe. I had neither direction nor impetus. I had had to steal the clothes I wore, and any food to sustain me. I had a fragmented mind that tormented me with things almost remembered. I had only one solid memory.

_My daddy died drinking Smoke._

It was no kind of place to start, but it was real and it was mine, and I would not let it define me.


End file.
